BRUSSELS, 1st June, 2026 (WAM) -- Victims of cyberbullying will soon be able to ask the Telecommunications Ombudsman's Office for the identity of anonymous perpetrators, announced Rob Beenders, Federal Minister for Consumer Protection.

Last year, the Telecommunications Ombudsman Service received thousands of complaints about online bullying - via social media such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Snapchat. These often involve serious offences such as death threats, intimidation or stalking, sometimes by anonymous perpetrators.

If such offences are committed over the phone or via text messages, victims can already request information about the perpetrators from the Ombudsman using the telephone number. This legislation has not, until now, applied to online bullying.

Beenders is now amending the law, together with his colleague for Digitalisation, Vanessa Matz. The Ombudsman's Office will soon be able to help find the identity and address of anonymous perpetrators on social media. Victims can then use this information to go to the police, take legal action or contact the perpetrator themselves. Operators and other relevant services will be obliged to cooperate with the investigation, otherwise they face a fine from the telecom regulator BIPT.

However, experts question whether this is feasible in practice and are also concerned that people might take the law into their own hands.

According to Belgian News Agency (Belga), another major question is whether companies actually know their users' identities. IP addresses are rather easy to circumvent, for example via a VPN. And even if they do know the identity behind the hate messages, critics doubt whether social media companies would be willing to disclose it.